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How begin a report about this poignant book? It’s called Number the stars, written by Lois Lowry.
It takes place in Copenhaguen, Denmark, in 1943, during the Second World War. Annemarie is 10 years old. She ‘s used to tell fairytales to her little sister Kirsti, with queens and kings. Her best friend is Ellen, a Jewish young girl.
During the 1943 fall, the German are beginning the “relocation” of all Danish Jews. But thanks to some Danish politics “leaks”, the Jew community is warned during the New Year that something was going to happen.
It’s the story about the Danish resistance, helping thousands of Danish Jews to escape to Sweden, which is not invaded by the Nazis. It’s this story told by a young girl, not naïve, but who has genuine thoughts about the adult world, and help to protect her best 10 years-old friend, Ellen.
I’m half Danish. But from Denmark, I essentially know about culinary culture and Christmas. I didn’t know anything from the Second World War. My grandmother told us a very few, as we couldn’t speak Danish at that time. But I know about the rationing: rye-bread and some potatoes, and that was all. I had no idea about how the Danish people protected their friends. How the King Christian sank his float, so the German couldn’t use it…
Sometimes, I’m wondering if I would be as brave as Annemarie if I lived during the war. Anyway, I would advise you this book, very well written, in a simple English with just enough new words to enjoy the story AND learn English. The emotions are simple, but very poignant.
Thank you Sherri, for sharing this book with me.

Today I would like to share a very precious reading of mine. As I’m thinking about how to continue to help people (as I used to do as a medical doctor), but without doing the equivalence, I’m reading a lot of things on dying, living with a cancer or other critical illness.

The first time I went back to my library after my last 2 months in France, I found that very famous book for me: On Death and Dying. It’s famous because I learned during my medical studies the different steps of grief, which come from that book. But I never read the book itself. So today I’m proud to tell you that I read it in its original version!!

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a psychiatrist, born in Switzerland. She worked in France and in Poland, during a typhoid fever epidemic. She also discovered black butterflies drawn by children in Majdanek concentration camp … After all these special life experiences, she moved to the USA where she became a psychiatrist, and dedicated her research to dying patients, and later dying children.

This book is the first that she wrote, while working in Chicago. She explains the seminar that took place at the hospital, initially with 4 theology students. The principle was to interview a critically sick person, in front of a one way mirror. Behind the mirror, at first 4 students but soon up to 50 people, nurses, medical students, theology students … What impressed me is that I’m not sure that those interviews given in 1965 would be so different today. The only difference would be that no patient would remain without knowing his diagnosis from the doctor himself. At that time, so many patients would only be informed by their family of the severity of the disease … So that’s definitely some progress of the last 40 years.

But the 5 steps of grief are still so true. At first it’s denial and isolation. « That’s not possible! » usually quite short, but sometimes pathologically long. Then comes the anger: « Why me? » People can be angry at their doctor, their nurse. The important thing for caring staff is to remember that this anger is not against them in particular, but against « the entire world » for being sick. And that’s a lesson that every new generation has to learn, that I learned a few times with patients…
The third stage is bargaining: people try to ask « nicely » to try to get something. To God, to their doctor… They try to stay functioning until a child’s wedding for example.
When bargaining cannot be positively answered comes the fourth stage, the depression stage. People are sad, realizing the different losses in life (work, physical appearance …) preceding the loss of life itself. It’s a difficult stage to go through, because often there are some conflicts about how to deal with spouse, with children…

Eventually, when those conflicts are dealt with, the patient enters the last step, aka acceptance. The patient gets detached from his family, is less hungry. That’s the final stage of grief and dying. Not everybody is able to attain that stage, depending on the ability of his entourage to let him go…

Those stages, I did learn during my medical studies. But what I didn’t learn really (or at least what I didn’t remember) is to give hope at every stage. Not false hope, but Hope. At least respect the patients’ hope, such as the discovery of a new treatment (rarely on time…). And I admit this is a hard thing to do in every day life as a thoracic oncologist… And that’s what I would like to work on in the future.

This book is not just a dissertation about the different stages, it’s most of all a collection of patients’ testimonies about dying, and about life. I would recommend this book to every health care student, but also to everybody who has to take care of a sick person (does that mean quite everybody?). This book is very touching…

Before I left the US, I just finished Sound Reporting, written by Jonathan Kern. It took me quite a while to finish it, because it is very complete.
There are some chapters about how to make a « piece » of a few seconds to eight minutes, the kind of report you could listen on « All Things considered. » It’s a goldmine for beginners: write before you say, write as you would speak, how to record on the field, etc.

Then the author explains how to make an entire show, like on NPR. How to edit it, how to host it, how to manage the technical problems… And finally, you could one day be « beyond » the radio, like by having a community on social media, or by having your radio on internet.

So what ? Do you listen to the radio ? I try to listen to NPR when in the US, but it’s hard for me to do something else on the same time, either because of troubling noises (like washing dishes for example), either because I can’t concentrate on two things at the same time. But when I do listen to NPR, I find it « dry. » The hosts speak all the same way, and when it’s a talk-show, there is no music. « If you want music, there are music radio elsewhere, » was I told once…

When in France, I try to listen to France Inter. The public French radio is composed of several channels. France Culture would be the equivalent of NPR, France Musique broadcasts classical music and jazz, France Info is a continuous news channel… And France Inter is a mix of the others, with a touch of pop music.

But one show is not just news reports, or music. It’s generally a well-dosed mix. And there are some interviews of half an hour or three quarters. I used to listen France Inter all the day long during my studies. I had some voice-friends: at 4pm Frederic Lodeon and all his stories about classical music. At 5pm Daniel Mermet, from « Là-bas si j’y suis » (There if I am there), about people, places, social initiatives. During the summer, « Dernier parking avant la plage » (Last parking lot before the beach) with some crime novel readings by Sophie Loubière. They all accompanied me during anatomy and physiology lessons, in my room in Strasbourg, as a medical student.

I wish I could find such a friend-voice in the US… I wish I could become such a friend-voice one day… Let’s see what’s next in the story!

And you? Do you have any experience with radio listening? Please tell me…

Every year, in April, Dallas Public Library promote the reading of one book, the same for everybody. This year, it is « True Grit », and I was given one book. I wrote a report for my reading club for English as a second language speaker. It has already been published on their blog(dplread.blogspot.com). Because I’m sometimes a bit lazy, here it is.

When I asked my husband what means “grit”, he looked at me, showed me his teeth and made a sound like “Argh”. I asked that question before reading the book, and the answer was surprising, and not very much enlightening.

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.” This is the beginning of the novel. A long and dry sentence, like several parts of the book.

Mattie Ross, the fourteen-year-old girl, is chasing Tom Chaney, her father’s murderer, through Arkansas and Texas. She’s looking for somebody with true grit to go with her. I had a hard time to begin the book, because the story goes very slow … Find someone with true grit, then meet him at the court (after retranscribing a long part of one trial…), discussing the price to go, finding a horse …

But at one point, they ride on their horses and the real story begins. Guns fire at every riverbank or every hill, toward different bandits. Bandit seems to be a job, with values, but very mortal… Then, it was hard to leave the book until the end, the suspense was important.

I had a journey through the Wild West, on a black pony. First Mattie sounds like a naive girl, but with no fear… Progressively, her character gets more profound, more intense. She eventually become human when she shows her fears at the end, even if that doesn’t stop her to go on… With justice.

After reading the book, we watched the movie (the original one, with John Wayne). And that confirms that I’m not fond with the “cow boys movies” as we say in French… But despite that, that book trapped me. A classic, indeed.

I hope that my next book report will be about « sound reporting » … I hope there are things coming. I’ll you soon.

I just finished the Harper Lee’s book « To kill a mockingbird ». It was written in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. It was precisely the time of the first protests of Black students against segregation.

This novel takes place where it was written, in Alabama. Scout, an 8 year old girl, explains that summer with her brother Jem and her friend Dill. She describes with her little girl’s eyes the trial of a black man accused of the rape of a white 19 year old white girl. Her father is the court-appointed lawyer of the black guy. This is the story of a girl discovering the human feelings like love and hate, but also the weird polite behavior of the white middle class towards the black population of the town, as well as the hostility of the poor whites towards the same black population. I was completely taken in by the warm ambiance of Alabama, the children playing, the adults working and sweating.

« I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. » That sentence from chapter 10 gives the title to the novel. It summarizes all the book in one sentence. The father tells his children how they can use their new air-rifle. Bluejays and mockingbirds are birds (I’ve picked some YouTube videos for the non-American or non-naturalist who don’t know those birds), but they are also people or feelings …

I finally finished that book by C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce. I say finally because every single word I didn’t know, I looked for it in the dictionary. And it’s 20 pages of my small notebook… But I’m cheating, there are some words I looked 3 or 4 times for… I will let you guess which ones…

Here’s the summary. It’s the story of C.S. Lewis (he says « I ») in a strange world. At the beginning he is queuing to take a bus. During that time he discovers « the grey town ». A place where you can get everything material you need or want, but where people are quarrelsome. So you are often lonely. In that city, it’s an everlasting after-sunset gray light.
Some people renounce to take the bus, but Lewis eventually takes it. The journey with other people from a gray light to a radiant blue light is the instant to whimper about the gray town and its rules. It’s also the moment to be afraid of what’s coming: a bright land where everything is tough and so heavy that you couldn’t bear a leaf…
At the arrival, some people from the bus, who in fact are transparent as Ghosts, meet Spirits from that luminous land. But many of them experience the meeting with someone they knew on Earth and don’t want to see anymore. It becomes hard to repent and believe the joy you can see when that’s asked by a friend of yours that you call a murderer. It’s hard to « just » believe when you used to be a Protestant earthman and to like discussing the Bible … One woman is asked to renounce « taking in charge » her husband in Heaven (that means renounce trying to change her husband’s way of life). To « go to Heaven », you need to change, you need to trust, you need to be yourself, as the man who was acting during his life, represented as a Tragedian character clutched through a chain by a Dwarf, and who disappears when he doesn’t renounce his tragic appearance …
This fable is about the discovery of Heaven, a wonderful land with plain joy and mirth, but where you change and leave grumbling and whining, lust, jealousy in the grey town, which is finally a very small place in the crackles of Heaven’s ground.

I liked very much this book. Because ideas are not given dry nor complicated. They are given as fables, like stories for the child I am. I discovered a wonderful land, with deep colors as crimson, radiant blue or golden apples, with flowers as heather and hawthorn, covered with dew. I also went through the different human characters (and characteristic sounds): grumbling, whimpering, whining, sulkily, wicked, but also mirth, joy, in love and mere.

I looked on Wikipedia about The great divorce, and I learned that the original title was « Who goes home? ». That’s interesting when you read about people who created their own Hell on Earth. You choose your home as you can choose to truly love and to be happy before the death.

And you? Did you read The Great Divorce? Would you recommend me another reading?

Last month I read “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis. For people like me who don’t know very much about theology, he is the author of “The chronicles of Narnia” (Les mondes de Narnia). But he also wrote different theological books, as he became a Christian during his life. He also loved his wife lately but deeply, until she died of cancer (my good old friend “cancer”).

After he died, he wrote what he felt in notebooks. The first sensations were the symptoms of fear but without being afraid, associated with the feeling that everything is too much to do. Meanwhile he is asking the role of God. Could He be so absent? That is a question I find hard to ask. Who dares to express angriness against God while believing in Him? I never did… Maybe I doubted His being, sometimes.

He inquires into life after death … What’s the life of a dead person? Is it through the remembrance by the living relatives, with the fact that all remembrance can be distorted with time? Is it just an end, with a rotten body in a grave? Is it a very comfortable place near God? Are the dead people as sad as the living ones being separate from each other?

The pain sounds intolerable at the beginning. Eventually it lessens, but remains, as a scar. Progressively, he’s afraid to forget. To forget his love for his wife, to forget the memories. It’s like if she’s dying another time…

But finally there can be a kind of peace in these feelings…

C.S. Lewis says it’s about him, his wife and God, in that order …

This book made me remember my classes about the end of life in Medical School. They taught us the 5 stages of grief by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (the denial, the anger, the bargaining, the depression and eventually the acceptance). But nobody told us anything about faith during the grief process.

Because I live in France, because we have the “laïcité”, we barely talk about religion in the public space. And as a Doctor with my white gown, I never bring faith up for discussion … And I think that it’s something I missed when I worked regularly with dying people.

Who cares about Doctors grieving their patients? How do the other doctors deal with the loss of their patients? If anybody knows, tell me.

Many stages of my life began with a grief of someone or something. Understanding doesn’t make it easier, but I guess that for my next loss, I’ll go back to C.S. Lewis. Because he shares something very important that all of us will unfortunately experience one day… And sharing is so important to get better. That’s why I share with you my reading, and that’s why I would be happy for you to share your comments.